FOSS4G 2023

Smart Maps for the UN and All - keeping web maps open
06-29, 10:30–11:00 (Europe/Tirane), UBT C / N109 - Second Floor

Do you want to broaden your horizons by learning about geospatial support for the United Nations operations? Or are you interested in developing highly efficient and portable geospatial apps which make use of PMTiles, COPC, COG, Raspberry Pi, and a cool Web3 technology named IPFS (Inter-planetary File System)? We are doing both in the Domain Working Group 7 (DWG 7) on Smart Maps of the UN Open GIS Initiative.

In this participatory and voluntary DWG established in Firenze in August 2023, participants bring in their objectives and combine efforts within the Partnership for Technology in Peacekeeping to bring greater involvement to peacekeeping through innovative approaches and technologies that have the potential to empower UN global operations. In addition to our core objective to support the use of UN Vector Tile Toolkit in the UN Global Service Centre, DWG 7 is supporting domestic and campus-level service operations, and supporting 3D geospatial data such as point clouds and 3D city models. We are combining efforts to define and implement the concept of Smart Maps.

We are happy to share with you our new effort named Model UN Development and Operations (MUNDO) that simulates geospatial support for the United Nations operations by making use of existing open geospatial data and our Smart Maps technologies. MUNDO project is not only useful for demonstrating the technology for the UN staff, but also useful for learning about the situation and the UN’s effort. We are also happy to share with you our new concept of WebMaps3, which introduces Web3 technology for web maps. By combining IPFS and cloud optimized formats like PMTiles, COPC, and COG, we were successful in hosting a vector tiles service from a newly released nation-wide cadastre dataset on a Raspberry Pi, within 10 days after the release, by producing a 14GB PMTiles file.

Hidenori has more than 20 years of experience in web maps in the public sector. He has mostly been working for Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI). He launched the authority's web map named GSI Maps 2013 and initiated GSI Vector Tile Experiment in 2014. His Division won Japan Open Source Promotion Award in 2015. In 2018 he also founded the United Nations Vector Tile Toolkit that supports production, hosting, styling and optimization of vector tiles while his days in the United Nations Geospatial Information Section. Back in Japan in 2021 he assisted Fair Trade Commission to promote the use of Open Source in the Government. In August 2022 he founded Domain Working Group 7 on Smart Maps in the United Nations Open GIS Initiative. He aspires to keep web maps open.

This speaker also appears in:

Product manager / Software engineer based on Tokyo, Japan.

I'm contributing to:
- UN Open GIS Initiative
- Domain Working Group 7
- UNVT (The United Nations Vector Tile Toolkit)
- OpenStreetMap
- Code for Japan